departure from the pentagon today, plus clinton's last week and petraeus's resignation in 2012, general dempsey is the only known remaining advocate of arming the rebels still in a top advisory role. i'm joined who served in the obama administration state departments and is now dean of the school of advanced international studies at johns hopkins university. and andrew tabler, a senior fellow at the washington institute for near east policy. what were the main schools of thought. how did the camps break down in this argument inside the administration on what to do about syria, andrew? >> basically you have a discussion about syria about all the different options. and it really comes down to this. the white house was hedgingment they really did not want to get involved in syria. they have a firm policy to stay out of the middle east and would like to pull back. at the same time the agencies that deal with syria and the problem there, which is growing and mushrooming, the state department, cia and to a certain extent the department of defence all of which were throwing their hands up in the air a